Thread: AZ: State officials get first-hand look at border issues

http://kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=6171704&nav=HMO6

State officials get first-hand look at border issues

March 2, 2007 08:50 PM PST
Ed Tribble reports

The state capitol is about 180 miles from Nogales.

It's not a very long drive, but when it comes to border issues, lawmakers say sometimes it seems very far away.

Friday, several state legislators took a tour of the border to get a better understanding of its issues.

"When we're in Phoenix we don't always grasp different circumstances along the border, and hosting this tour, I wanted myself and members to gain a greater understanding of what these communities are actually facing," says Arizona Senate President Tim Bee.

To get a better idea, about a dozen lawmakers, along with other state leaders took a tour of the border, a detention center, and the Mariposa Port of Entry.

"There were very interesting statistics and things we have to take into consideration as we proceed with making laws in Arizona," Bee says.

Throughout the day they talked with local leaders from several communities all along the border.

They discussed issues important to them like traffic issues, business opportunities and border security.

"So they could see what's happening at the border so they could see the border is about commerce and about interdiction of drugs and interdiction of illegal aliens entering the country," says State Rep. Jennifer Burns.

And at the end of the day, a bus takes these lawmakers and their new knowledge back to Phoenix.

"Tremendous opportunities to interact with elected officials and law enforcement federal and state," Bee says.

Both the lawmakers and the local leaders said they thought it was a positive experience.

And what they learned Friday can help shape new laws.

it is a shame that it took Az lawmakers so long to look at the border. They should have been there years ago. This has been building since 1986 when promises about securing the border were not kept.

http://www.douglasdispatch.com/articles ... /news7.txt

State senators tour border in Nogales, examine issues

Mar 3, 2007

NOGALES, Ariz. - Several state senators came to Santa Cruz County Friday to tour the border and hear the concerns of those who call it home.

The 11 senators, led by Senate President Tim Bee, held a short luncheon, then toured the Mariposa Port of Entry before attending a meeting with various community leaders. The senators got an earful. In the packed chambers at Nogales City Hall, representatives from Ambos Nogales, Patagonia, Santa Cruz County, Yuma, the Tohono O'odham Nation and San Luis educated the senators about the issues they would like addressed at the state Legislature.

The mayor of Nogales, Sonora, Marco Antonio Martinez Dabdoub, related some of the problems his city faces. For the most part, the state Legislature is powerless to help him."Mexico City says we have 200,000 people in Nogales, Sonora, although the number is closer to 300,000," he said. "The fact is people in Mexico are coming north and as a result two trends are developing."

Those trends represent the best and worst of a border community. Martinez said some people who go to the United States to work lose their Mexican cultural identity, but fail to gain an American one.

"These are people without a country," he said.

On the flip side, some regular border-crossers become bi-cultural. This provides them with a unique insight that makes them an invaluable resource to legislators addressing border issues, Martinez said.

Terry Shannon is the chairman of the Nogales Santa Cruz County Port Authority. That organization is comprised of representatives from several local entities. The idea, Shannon said, is that the weight of all the organizations combined carries more weight with the state Legislature than any individual part would. Shannon's chief concern is that the Mariposa Port of Entry is handling far more traffic than it was originally designed for.

"The port was designed to handle 400-500 trucks per day," he said. "Right now, 1,500 are passing through." To that end, the port needs money to expand.

Shannon added that 288,000 trucks carrying 2 billion pounds of produce pass through the port each year.

"That is 48 percent of all the produce consumed in the United States," he said.

Olivia Ainza-Kramer is the chairwoman for the Nogales Santa Cruz County Chamber of Commerce. She touched on an issue that also affects the Yuma representatives.

"Please eliminate liability for small business owners who unknowingly employee illegal immigrants," she said.

Paul Muthart of Western Growers in Yuma addressed this issue much more forcefully. Growers in Yuma need 25,000 workers per day to harvest winter crops that cannot be grown in any other place in the United States, he said.

"Our most significant issue is access to labor," he said.

All of the farmers he knows in Yuma stand for national security and never knowingly employ an illegal immigrant. To this end, a reliable database is necessary for all the legal Mexican workers in the United States.

The current Social Security system isn't efficient because of the Hispanic practice of using two last names. This is commonly confused when a name is searched in the Social Security records, he said. Farmers end up turning away legal field hands.

Second, Muthart said, most of the workers in Yuma would prefer to return home to Mexico at the end of the day.

Carlos Lopez, director of Economic Development at the City of San Luis, and Gilbert Lara, director of public safety in the city, echoed Muthart's concerns.

Representatives from the Tohono O'odham Nation addressed the issues raised by living on an extremely rural section of the border.

"Our officers investigate about 60 deaths per year of people who die trying to cross our desert," said Ed Reyna, director of the Department of Public Safety Tohono O'odham Nation. "About 60 percent of our officers' time is used investigating border-related issues."

The immigration has caused a permanent effect on O'odham culture, the representatives said. Although the federal government has helped protect O'odham cultural and burial grounds, some residents feel unsafe.

"We used to like to walk in the desert," said Ethel Garcia, a councilwoman of the Tohono O'odham Nation Legislature. "Now, we can't do that."